'The resistible rise of Nuri al-Maliki'

When faced with a rising tide of violence,
largely caused by their own policy mistakes, the US occupation embarked on the reconstitution
of an Iraqi military. The
resultant Iraqi security forces, under the control of Nuri al-Maliki, are today on their way to occupying the same role as the armed forces of the Ba’athist regime.

American withdrawal
and the December crisis.

On December 15, 2011,
in a fortified compound at Baghdad International Airport, the US Secretary of
Defence, Leon Panetta, oversaw the formal end of the American military presence
in Iraq.

American withdrawal
and the December crisis.

On December 15, 2011,
in a fortified compound at Baghdad International Airport, the US Secretary of
Defence, Leon Panetta, oversaw the formal end of the American military presence
in Iraq. The event marked the final departure of US troops, eight years and
nine months after the invasion. Two
weeks later, once the final US convoys had slipped across the border into Kuwait,
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared December 31 ‘Iraq Day’ and sent a celebratory
text message to the population declaring the start of a new post-American era,

‘We are all for Iraq. Glory and honour to the
people. I congratulate you and our proud Iraqi people for this historic day.
With my love and respect to you and your family. Your brother Nuri
al-Maliki’.[1]

Given
the instability, insurgency and civil war that invasion and regime change
wrought, the final departure of American troops was greeted with a sense of
relief and release by the Iraqi population, once again unambiguously in control
of their own destiny. However, the
violent aftermath of regime change was in large part driven by America’s
ambitious attempts at re-engineering Iraqi politics after Ba’athist rule. The celebrations marking the final
departure of the US were hence tinged with widespread concern about how the
on-going political consolidation would turn out.

Those
Iraqis worrying about the future trajectory of Iraqi politics did not have long
to wait for an answer to their fears.
On the evening of the departure ceremony, Iraqi troops and tanks
surrounded the houses of the country’s Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, its Minister of Finance,
Rafi al-Issawi and its Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq. All three are leading members of the Iraqiyya coalition
which gained more votes than the Prime Minister in the March 2010 national
elections.

That night all three
politicians were placed under temporary house arrest. Three of Tariq al-Hashimi’s bodyguards were then arrested. After four days in detention the trio
reappeared on national television.
Their televised confessions denounced the Vice President for paying them
to carry out a series of assassinations and bomb attacks. When the judges issued an arrest
warrant for al-Hashimi three more confessions from policemen in the north western
town of Fallujah were added. They claimed
that the Vice President, the Minister of Finance, Rafi al-Issawi and senior regional
members of their party had set up and run a death squad, Hamas of Iraq, in the
town from 2006 onwards.

However, once these
startling confessions were aired, evidence soon emerged to cast doubt on their
veracity. As the ‘facts’
unravelled, those involved in torturing the bodyguards gave a lengthy and
detailed interview, explaining how they extracted the confessions but also describing
their contents as ‘absurd’.[2] Secondly,
US State Department cables released by Wikileaks revealed that as early as 2006,
the Iraqi government was using the sustained torture of prisoners in an attempt
to produce incriminating evidence against Tariq al-Hashimi.[3]

The intriguing
question underpinning the first post-American political crisis in Iraq is why
it happened at all? Why did Nuri
al-Maliki feel the need to move so brutally and dramatically against his
political opponents? On the face of
it al-Maliki has proved to be an extremely skilled if Machiavellian
politician. Despite his failure to
win the March 2010 national elections, he spent ten months outmanoeuvring inept
rivals in Iraqiyya to retain the premiership, without the imposition of meaningful
constraints on his power. Tariq
al-Hashimi has certainly been a fixture in Iraqi politics since 2003 and has
served as Vice President since 2006.
However, in contrast to the Prime Minister, his post has largely been ceremonial
and he is neither a particularly skilled nor popular political operator. Therefore
the reasons behind al-Maliki’s move against al-Hashimi and his colleagues may
lie in the hinterland beyond Baghdad, in the provincial politics of Iraq where
there is still the potential to threaten the Prime Minister.

Iraq’s post-regime
change constitution was a hurriedly written and controversial document. In 2005, when it was drafted, it was
thought to represent a victory for the two dominant Kurdish parties, the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Their aim was to keep the autonomous powers
they had amassed since 1991 and simultaneously constrain the powers of the
central state as much as possible.
To this end the constitution gave regions the right to exercise
executive, legislative and judicial authority and demand an equitable share of
national oil revenues. Beyond the
Kurdish Regional Government, the constitution gave other governorates the right
to become regions. A referendum to
make this happen could be triggered by a provincial council vote.

During 2011, key
Iraqiyya politicians, particularly the Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi
and al-Hashimi himself came to see the move towards regional decentralisation
as the only possible way to limit Nuri al-Maliki’s domination of Iraq. Al-Maliki’s response in October 2011
was to unleash a fresh wave of arrests across the three of the provinces north of
Baghdad - Anbar, Salahaddin and Diyala - who have a Sunni majority. The same three
provinces delivered a large percentage of Iraqiyya’s votes in the 2010
election.

In the aftermath of
the crackdown, on October 27, 2011, Salahaddin Council voted to move forward
with a referendum. This was
followed by Diyala in mid-December, with Anbar council threatening to follow
suit a week later. More worrying
still for al-Maliki, the Shia majority provinces of Basra and Wasit in the
south had likewise attempted this move in 2011. The Prime Minister, when faced with constitutionally
legitimate attempts to weaken the central state’s dominance of the provinces, unleashed
further repression and exerted his influence over Iraq’s election commission to
ensure these referendums never took place. However, in mid-December, two days before his house was
surrounded by Iraqi troops, Vice President al-Hashimi threw his public support
behind the federalist movements in both the south and north west of the country
saying the people involved “are unwilling to accept further injustice,
corruption and bad management from the central government”.[4]

Against this
background, al-Maliki’s move against his own Vice President and Iraqiyya’s role
in government can be seen as a very public and brutal attempt to stop the
latest and possibly most serious threat to his on-going campaign to centralise power
in his own hands.

The rise and rise of
Nuri al-Maliki.

How did Nuri
al-Maliki manage to gain such a dominant position within post-regime change
Iraqi politics? Like the vast majority of Iraq’s current ruling elite,
al-Maliki was driven into exile by the Ba’athist regime; leaving in 1980 he first
fled to Tehran and later to the Syrian capital, Damascus. After returning to the country in 2003,
al-Maliki entered parliament in the first set of national elections in January
2005. His boss, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of the Dawa Islamic Party,
then served as interim Prime Minister for twelve months. By the time of the elections for the
first post-invasion full term-government in December 2005, al-Jaafari had
alienated a number of key Iraqi politicians as well as the British and American
governments. He was considered to
lack the personal dynamism and diplomacy needed to weld the disparate political
factions into a coherent coalition government. After 156 days of increasingly fractious negotiations,
al-Maliki was chosen to replace al-Jaafari because of his greater political acumen.

However, upon taking
office in April 2006, al-Maliki was confronted by major problems that
constrained his ability to govern. He found himself at the head of a government
with very little administrational capacity. The Iraqi state had floundered since
its collapse in 2003; al-Maliki had few governmental institutions with which to
influence Iraqi society. Similarly, within the government itself the position
of Prime Minister is constitutionally weak. In the aftermath of the 2005
elections, the successful political parties divided up the ministerial
positions and the resources that came with them. Lacking political leverage, al-Maliki
was unable to dominate or even direct his cabinet. Instead he was, at best, a
facilitator, attempting to create a degree of consensus amongst his ministers, their
powerful party bosses and the US Embassy and military. To make matters worse,
al-Maliki was neither the first nor second choice for Prime Minister. After his appointment in 2006, there
was constant speculation about his motives, competency and his ability to stay
in power. Throughout 2006 and 2007,
Baghdad was awash with conspiracies to unseat him.

U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. White House photo by Paul Morse. All rights reserved

In order to secure
his position, al-Maliki focused his energies on gaining complete control of the
security services. He set about subverting the formal chain of command, tying
senior army commanders, paramilitary units and the intelligence services to him
personally. In doing so he ‘coup
proofed’ the security forces but also politicised and personalised its chain of
command. He created the Office of the Commander in Chief in 2007 and used
this platform to appoint and promote senior officers who were personally
loyal. As responsibility for
security in each province was handed from the United States military to Iraqi
control, the Prime Minister set up a number of operational commands to bring
both the army and the police force together under one regional organisation. These operational
commands were run by a single commanding officer who managed all the security
services operating in his province.
These officers are appointed and managed from a central office in
Baghdad under the control of al-Maliki.
The appointment of these powerful generals reflected the Prime
Minister’s personal preferences.
Through the use of these joint operational commands al-Maliki bypassed
his security Ministers and their senior commanders and parliamentary oversight,
locating control of Iraq’s armed forces in his private office.

Furthermore, in April 2007, as control of Iraq’s Special Forces was
handed from the US to the Iraqi government, a Counter-Terrorism
Bureau was set up to manage them at ministerial level. This effectively removed control
of Iraqi Special Forces, with 6,000
men in its ranks, from the Ministries of Defence and Interior and placed them under the direct control of
the Prime Minister, well away from legislative control or parliamentary
oversight. This force is considered to be the best trained in the
Middle East. It operates its own
detention centres, intelligence gathering and has surveillance cells in
every governorate across central and southern Iraq. It now forms al-Maliki’s
Praetorian Guard. Since the force was removed from the formal chain of command
and from legal oversight, it has become known as the Fedayeen al-Maliki, a reference to their reputation as the
Prime Minster’s tool for covert action against his rivals as well as an ironic reference
to Saddam’s own highly unpopular militia.[5]

Finally, al-Maliki moved to bring Iraq’s intelligence services under his
direct control. This became
apparent when Mohammed
al-Shahwani, the head of the National
Intelligence Service, came into an increasingly public conflict with
Sherwan al-Waeli, appointed by al-Mailki in 2006 to be the Minister of State
for National Security Affairs. The National Intelligence Service was established
by America’s Central Intelligence Agency and al-Shahwani enjoyed a long and
close working relationship with Washington over many years. Al-Waeli, conversely, was considered to
be al-Maliki’s man.[6] Things came to a head in August 2009
after a series of major bombs in the centre of Baghdad. Al-Shahwani argued in the Iraqi press
that there was clear evidence linking the attacks to Iran. In the subsequent fallout surrounding
the incident al-Shahwani was forced to resign and delivered Iraq’s security
services into al-Maliki’s grasp.

In pursuit of security – but whose?

The use of Iraq’s security services to personally
protect Nuri al-Maliki reached its peak at the end of March 2008. Al-Maliki believed at that time he faced a coordinated plot to unseat
him. An upsurge in militia
violence in the southern port city of Basra would be used as a pretext to push
a vote of no confidence through the parliament in Baghdad and unseat al-Maliki
as Prime Minister. To outflank
this plot al-Maliki sent four divisions of the Iraqi army into Basra to seize
control of the city back from the militias that were threatening his rule. The resulting military campaign almost
ended in disaster and defeat. This
was only avoided by the extended intervention of US troops and air
support. However, al-Maliki used
this eventual victory to stamp his authority on the Iraqi government and the
armed forces and to reshape his political image country-wide as an Iraqi
nationalist and the saviour of the country.

The Prime Minister’s
new image was unveiled in the provincial election campaign of January
2009. Al-Maliki named his
coalition, Dawlat al-Qanoun or ‘State
of Law’, in an attempt to convince the population that it was his policies and
actions that brought increased law and order to Iraq. On the campaign trail al-Maliki stressed the success of
the military campaigns in Basra and his decision to send troops into the Sadr
City area of Baghdad. He
emphasised his role in challenging the Kurdish Regional Government’s expansionist
policies along its boundary with the rest of Iraq. In a key campaign speech he set himself against the
decentralised federal agenda of his main rivals for the Shia vote, the Islamic
Supreme Council of Iraq and their partners within the coalition government, the
Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The popular chord this approach struck
with a population that had until recently been mired in a sectarian civil war
was reflected in the fact that al Maliki’s coalition won the largest slice of
the popular vote in nine out of the 14 participating provinces.

Al-Maliki attempted
to reproduce this vote winning formula in the March 2010 national
elections. He hoped to capitalise
once again on his popularity across the south and centre of the country and on
his claim to have been responsible for the drop in inter-communal violence
since 2007. However, unlike in the
previous 2005 national elections, the Prime Minister refused to join a
sectarian coalition that sought to maximise the Shia vote and instead chose to
run on a State of Law platform.

The major issue that
dominated the national election campaign involved the Justice and
Accountability Commission, the government agency charged with implementing the
de-Ba’athification process set in train by the Americans. On 7 January 2010, the
commission, chaired by former American favourite Ahmed Chalabi, issued edicts
seeking to ban 511 individual candidates and 14 party lists from the elections.
Those advocating and backing the mass exclusion of candidates from the election
must have known that, at the very least, doing so would inflame sectarian
tensions and run the risk of encouraging politically motivated violence. In the
aftermath of the bans, the ‘Ba’athist threat’ became a key plank of al-Maliki’s
election campaign. When faced with a cynical electorate alienated by his
government’s continued inability to deliver jobs and services, al-Maliki chose
to conjure up the spectre of Ba’athism, once again playing to sectarian
sentiment in order to solidify his vote.

Ironically, although
this approach may have played a role in solidifying al-Maliki’s core
constituency it also drove Sunni’s to the ballot box in retaliation. This mobilisation of Sunni voters in
Baghdad and across the north west greatly favoured Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiyya
coalition, giving them 2,851,823 votes and 91 seats in the new parliament. Nuri al Maliki’s State of Law coalition
came second with 2,797,624 votes and 89 seats. With 163 seats needed for an overall majority neither of the
two leading groups gained enough votes for an outright victory. That left the Iraqi National Alliance
who came third with 70 seats, and the Kurdish Alliance with 43 seats, holding
the balance of power.

In the aftermath of
the vote, al-Maliki’s increasingly authoritarian behaviour became obvious when he
was faced with a potential electoral defeat. ‘No way we will accept the results’, he bluntly stated,
demanding a recount in order to prevent a ‘return to violence’. The potentially sinister implications
of this statement were exacerbated by the fact that he issued it in his role as
head of the country’s armed forces. In mid-May 2010, after the recount, the
electoral commission, backed up by the United Nations, announced that it had
found no evidence of fraud and the vote and seat allocation remained unchanged.

Negotiations to form
a government in the aftermath of the elections stretched from March to November
2010. They were shaped by two
opposing fears: on one hand, that al-Maliki’s growing power would lead to
dictatorship if he were reappointed; but on the other, that an increase in the
influence of the Sunni population in a potential Allawi government could lead
to the unravelling of the political settlement that was reached in the years
after the 2003 invasion.

The final
breakthrough came on 11 November, 2010, 249 days after the election. Al-Maliki managed to use the threat of
Allawi and his Sunni voters to impose a rough and ready unity of the Kurdish
and Shia parties, who had a great deal to lose from an Allawi premiership.
Masoud Barazani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and President of
the Kurdish Regional Government, chaired three days of negotiations to bring
Allawi and Iraqiyya into a government of national unity. During these
negotiations, key members of Allawi’s Iraqiyya coalition, Saleh al-Mutlaq and
Osama al-Nujaifi, opened up separate discussions with al-Maliki. After securing
positions for themselves in the new government – Deputy Prime Minister and
Speaker of the Parliament, respectively – they strong-armed Allawi into
accepting a formal deal by threatening to split Iraqiyya if he rejected it.

Justifications of
the resulting deal, later named the ‘Irbil Agreement’, focused on al-Maliki
signing a 15-point pledge designed to specifically limit his power. Concessions were
meant to include the hand over of the counter-terrorism forces to the Ministry
of Defence and strengthening chains of command over the army and police force.
The centrepiece of the agreement was the formation of a National Council for
Strategic Policy that Iyad Allawi would chair. All major policy decisions would
be sent to this council for approval before they were enacted by parliament.

Unfortunately, when
the new government finally coalesced, it constituted a political triumph for al-Maliki.
In spite of coming second in the elections he retained the premiership,
skilfully escaped all attempts to
constrain his power and inserted a number of loyalists to important cabinet
positions. He consistently outmanoeuvred Allawi and Iraqiyya, who failed to
secure the prime ministership, the presidency or any of the top positions in
the three security ministries – interior, defence or national security – which
Maliki either runs himself or has given to loyalists.

The ramifications of
circumventing the Irbil Agreement meant no meaningful constraints were placed on
al-Maliki’s grip on power. He did not relinquish control of Iraq’s
anti-terrorism forces, the National Council for Strategic Policy was not established
and the Kurdish Regional Government’s 19 demands on al- Maliki were not met. By
waiting out his adversaries, dividing the parties that opposed him and bribing
individual politicians with jobs they coveted, al-Maliki has, if anything,
tightened his control over the Iraqi state and its security forces. After the elections of 2010, the
December crisis of 2011 marks the next step in his consolidation of
authoritarian power.

Conclusions; back to
the future?

As things stand, the
trajectory of Iraqi politics is clearly heading towards a new authoritarianism
with the concentration of power in the hands of one man, Nuri al-Maliki. The key question for the long-suffering
Iraqi population who have seen at least 115,485 people die violent deaths since
the invasion and indeed for the United States who invested billions of dollars
in removing Saddam Hussein and reshaping Iraqi politics, is why did this
happen?

After disbanding the
Iraqi army in May 2003, the US government, realising its mistake and faced with
a rising tide of politically motivated violence, embarked on a rapid remilitarisation of the Iraqi state’s
relations with its own society. From
April 2003 onwards, the US spent $19 billion – matched by $16.6bn from the
Iraqi government – in an attempt to train, equip and pay the new Iraqi armed
forces. The Iraqi Ministry of Defence’s budget rose by a yearly average of 28
percent from 2005 to 2009.[7] So, to all intents and purposes, when faced with a rising tide of
violence, largely caused by their own policy mistakes, the US occupation embarked
on the reconstitution of an Iraqi military. The resultant Iraqi security forces, under the control of Nuri al-Maliki, are today on their way to occupying the same role as the armed forces of the Ba’athist regime.

Sgt. 1st Class Bryan Beach. All rights reserved

The US government’s
justification for the rapid re-militarisation of Iraq would focus on the
‘democratic oversight’ established to constrain the use of state sanctioned
coercion. Officially, the command
and control of the Iraqi security forces was centred on the Iraqi Joint Forces Command, which was
subservient to the National Operations Centre in Baghdad and overseen by the
Minister of Defence. However, in
truth, the rapid remilitarisation of the
Iraqi state’s relations with its own society was pushed through by the US in an
attempt to limit their own casualties and hence reduce the domestic political
cost of occupying Iraq. The speed
with which this was done and the massive investment channeled into Iraq’s
security forces left the country, once again dominated by a huge military
machine. After 2006, the control
of this machine to guarantee his own survival became the overbearing strategic
aim of Nuri al-Maliki. By the time
US forces finally left Iraq in December 2011, he had achieved that aim. Iraq today has a set of over-developed
coercive institutions increasingly placed at the service of one man, its Prime
Minister. The clear and present danger
this poses to Iraq’s nascent democracy, its civil society and its population is
obvious.

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